Le Grand Meaulnes

This evening, which I have tried to spirit away, is a strange burden to me. While time moves on, while the day will soon end and I already wish it gone, there are men who have entrusted all their hopes to it, all their love and their last efforts. There are dying men or others who are waiting for a debt to come due, who wish that tomorrow would never come. There are others for whom the day will break like a pang of remorse; and others who are tired, for whom the night will never be long enough to give them the rest that they need. And I - who have lost my day - what right do I have to wish that tomorrow comes?

Je pensais de meme que notre jeunesse etait finie et le bonheur manqué. I thought too that our youth was over and we had failed to find happiness.

Weeks went by, then months. I am speaking of a far-away time - a vanished happiness. It fell to me to befriend, to console with whatever words I could find, one who had been the fairy, the princess, the mysterious love-dream of our adolescence - and it fell to me because my companion had fled. Of that period ... what can I say? I've kept a single image of that time, and it is already fading: the image of a lovely face grown thin and of two eyes whose lids slowly droop as they glance at me, as if her gaze was unable to dwell on anything but an inner world.

Be my friends against the day I shall be on the brink of hell, as I was once before

I've kept a single image of that time, and it is already fading: the image of a lovely face grown thin and of two eyes whose lids slowly droop as they glance at me, as if her gaze was unable to dwell on anything but an inner world.

If you feel you ought to go, if I came to you at a moment when nothing could make you happy, if it's necessary for you to leave me now so that you may some day come back to me at peace, then it is I who ask you to go...

We said to him: here is your happiness, here is what you spent your whole youth looking for, here is the girl you saw in all your dreams! How could anyone, pushed by the shoulders like that, avoid a reaction of indecision, then fear, then dismay--how could he resist the temptation to escape?

Tranquil since he had arranged his room, the boy felt perfectly happy. He was there, mysterious, a stranger, in the middle of an unknown world, in the room he had chosen.

This was the setting in which the most troubled and most precious days of my life were lived: an abode from which our adventurings flowed out, to flow back again like waves breaking on a lonely headland.

Who can say what obscure forces were then at work in a heart that had never been tamed?

she had been the fairy, the princess and the mysterious love of all our adolescence

with the feeling that inside the old carriage my adolescence had just vanished for evermore

He kept walking, stopping and then setting off again more quickly like a man in search of memories which he sorts out, challenges and compares, ponders on, thinks he has discovered, and then the thread breaking the search begins once more . . .

Mais quelqu'un est venu qui m'a enlevé à tous ces plaisirs d'enfant paisible. Quelqu'un a soufflé la bougie qui éclairait pour moi le doux visage maternel penché sur le repas du soir. Quelqu'un a éteint la lampe autour de laquelle nous étions une famille heureuse, à la nuit, lorsque mon père avait accroché les volets de bois aux portes vitrées. Et celui-là, ce fut Augustin Meaulnes, que les autres élèves appelèrent bientôt le grand Meaulnes.

Mas então adianto-me e tomo o único partido possível: com a ajuda do médico e de uma das mulheres, passando o braço sob as costas da morta, o outro sob as pernas, carrego-a de encontro a meu peito. Sentada em meu braço esquerdo, os ombros apoiados no meu braço direito, a cabeça caída encostada sob meu queixo, Yvonne pesa; terrivelmente sobre o meu coração. Desço lentamente, degrau a degrau, a comprida e íngreme escada, enquanto embaixo tudo já está a postos.

A mezzogiorno Madame Meaulnes arrivò con la sua carrozza, fece colazione col figlio al Café Daniel e appena il cavallo fu governato e attaccato, lo portò via senza darci nessuna spiegazione […]. Avevo l'impressione che in quell'antiquata carrozza la mia adolescenza se ne stesse andando per sempre.

... the old Berlin – last vestige of a mysterious fête – wheeled away from the gravelled road and went lurching noiselessly across country over a grass-grown track. Beyond the hedge nothing could be seen of it but the driver's cap bobbing up and down.